Fascinating question and observations. I am not sure it is a heightened sense of smell so much as a distorted one though.

Alex is the cook in our family and when he was trying to get back to eating, he would cook whatever appealed to him for me to eat and for him to taste. By the time he was half way through cooking he would have lost his appetite and feel nauseous. We came to the conclusion that ANY cooking smells were either distorted or an overload for Alex. Eating out or using pre-packaged meals solved this problem to some extent.

To our great surprise the smell of eggs made Alex sick. He also complained that I smelt like "trees" (I think he meant the dank, wet, rotting, foresty smell, as I did not get the impression this was a good thing )

The other thing I remember quite clearly, was Alex's complete reversal of some taste sensations. We went to a Malaysian restaurant and ordered two dishes. One contained chilli. Whilst Alex couldn't eat it so much as taste it(couldn't swallow too well) he said he quite liked the flavour although it was not as expected. The second dish which had no heat in it in my opinion, nearly took his head off!! At first I thought it was chemo brain and he had got the two dishes mixed up. I had to call the waiter over to list the ingredients for each dish and tell Alex which was the spicy one. Even knowing this, Alex still thought the mild dish was the spicy one and the spicy one was ok.

I have a feeling this also started pre-radiation which suggests chemo plays a bigger role in this that we give it credit for.

He is good with tomatoes which seems to be a common fruit that others can't tolerate, can't stomach eggs, can't deal with mashed potato and gravy and seems to be better with sweet rather than savoury. Can taste and actually enjoys a dark beer (sorry,don't know what sort that is), is ok with apple juice but can't deal with orange. Loves the taste of parsley!!! Damn shame parsley has no calories or nutritional value (unless served by the shipload of course).